VATICAN CITY -- An elderly religious sister who worked for many years at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the papal residence, was at her congregation's house recovering from surgery when she received an unexpected visit from Pope Francis.

MANCHESTER, England -- The Vatican has allowed the bishops of Zimbabwe to open the sainthood cause of a British missionary murdered after he refused to abandon his ministry to people with Hansen's disease during the country's civil war.

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican press office said that the results of a morphological analysis of bones and bone fragments found at an ossuary in a Vatican cemetery concluded that none belonged to Emanuela Orlandi, a young Italian woman who has been missing for more than 30 years.

VATICAN CITY -- With the recent appointments of Matteo Bruni as the new director of the Holy See Press Office and Cristiane Murray as vice director, the Vatican is taking another step forward in its continuing efforts to reform its communication structures.

VATICAN CITY -- During a search for the remains of a young Italian woman missing for more than 30 years, workers discovered an enormous number of bones inside two ossuaries in a building next to a Vatican cemetery.